Arg

I don't know what's up with Blogger, but I keep trying to publish Quinn's birthday post and Blogger won't post to the blog, but it does send the post to feed readers. I suspect it's because it contains photos. I've had trouble with uploading photos for months and since my posts are often photo heavy I quite posting.

Bob and I haven't been on vacation since 2003/2004 when we went to St. Petersberg, Florida for New Years. This summer we decided it was VERY important to take a vacation. Studies say people who don't vacation die sooner than those who do vacation. We dithered endlessly about what kind of vacation to take. We looked at going to Michigan and found it too expensive. We looked at St. Louis and found it too miserably hot. We looked at Wisconsin and decided it was too far of a drive to get to the good parts. We looked at the Wisconsin Dells and I had an anxious fit about keeping Quinn from drowning at endless water parks. We looked at Iowa and decided it was too much like Le Roy. We looked at Santa Clause, IN and decided we just weren't into it.

Ultimately we decided to either go to Indianapolis or Chicago. Since the Indianapolis Zoo is OUTRAGEOUSLY price and since we go to Chicago less often we decided on Chicago. So we booked a hotel downtown, checked out the CityPass versus GoChicago, decided we definitely wanted to ride a water taxi and visit the Lego store, and went.

OMG it was mostly stressful and awful with moments of okay. The very first night Bob had to carry Henry three city blocks to a bathroom while Henry cried and cried and the very last day I raced Quinn through a downstate Wal-mart with diarrhea dripping down his legs and into his shoes. Most of the times in between were that level of stress. Quinn screaming in restaurants, screaming on the El, flopping to the floor just about every place we went. Henry prefers to ask for crappy overprices plastic junk in various gift shops than enjoy the view from the top of the Willis Tower or the fish at the Shedd or the stars at Adler. The best time he had was the lego store because I had decided in advance I would get him a large Lego set and let him carefully consider every. single. box. of Legos in the store.

After the Shedd was a bust (Quinn had to be carried out of the dolphin show) we gave up on getting our $ worth out of the CityPass and just visited parks around Chicago. We met up with Leah and rode a water taxi to Chinatown and ate at the Moon Palace and played at the playground where the water taxi disembarked. That was by far the most enjoyable segment of the trip. Three adults to two kids makes everything easier.

One of my goals for going to Chicago was to let the boys see different people living different lives from our life in LeRoy and we did do that. Broadening minds is hard work! They rode the El at rush hour when we were packed elbow to armpit and also when we had the car completely to ourselves. We didn't drive the car for 5 whole days. We played in two parks where we were the only English speaking family. We ate tender delicious steamed dumplings and crab rangoon with real crab in it.

Leah let Bob and I go out on our own one evening and we chose to eat at Giordano's bc there is NO WAY the kids could eat in a restaurant that takes 1 1/2 hours. After splitting a spinach & sausage pizza and a pitcher of Goose Island, Bob opined that these are the salad years. I thought to myself, I don't like salad.